Your correspondent, a double boarded practicing clinician, just doesn’t get it. California governator Arnold Schwarzenegger comes out swinging with a proposal to tax MDs 2% off their income to finance insurance scheme for all. From few, to all: just like in the Soviet Union. In addition, clinicians are assailed from all the other sides: managed care companies and insurance firms, trial lawyers, litigating patients, and populist politicians of both parties. As it becomes increasingly difficult to practice medicine, AMA says nothing about these assaults. And it does nothing. Instead, AMA and nine other “leading physician associations” came out yesterday with a list of “principles” for reforming the U.S. health care system that read like Brezhnev’s politburo talking points.
Can anyone explain what does principle #4 mean, in terms of reforming the U.S. health care system?
Improvement of health care quality and safety must be the goal of all health interventions, so that we can assure optimal outcomes for the resources expended.
What about principle #5?
In reforming the health care system, we as a society must respect the ethical imperative of providing health care to individuals, responsible stewardship of community resources, and the importance of personal health responsibility.
I don’t know about you, but it seems to me that all these “leading physician associations” are there not to defend MDs but to take politically correct side of populism of the lowest common denominator, and to perpetuate their own bureaucracies.
Any ideas from you on what blogs can do to help MDs to regain some ground?
Talking points at the American Medical Association…
–by DrO
Flashbacks: American Medical Association: No Doctors Day Celebrations?; Urgent Action Needed!; The AMA takes heat from the medical blogosphere.
Update: The title of the post has been changed.